Welcome to Hyperion Records, an independent British classical label devoted to presenting high-quality recordings of music of all styles and from all periods from the twelfth century to the twenty-first.

Hyperion offers both CDs, and downloads in a number of formats. The site is also available in several languages.

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Introduction

The poet of Faunenklage, Salomon Geßner (1730–1788), was a Swiss painter and poet who specialized in bucolic idylls; his paintings have titles such as Arcadian Landscape, and his poems include two volumes of idylls after the model of Theocritus. This poem comes from a longer work entitled ‘Der zerbrochene Krug’ in the Idyllen von dem Verfasser des Daphnis of 1756; here, a sylvan creature laments a broken cup (one keeps Freudian interpretations at bay only with difficulty), bewailing the loss of the stories inspired by the carvings around the rim. Zeus himself, this to a patch of especially lush harmonies, drank from it and never saw one lovelier, the singer declares mournfully.

Recordings

Mendelssohn seems to have finally hit the big league in this bicentenary year of his birth. Critical reappraisals of his music have confirmed this somewhat elusive composer as an important Romantic figure, and probably the greatest child prodigy o ...» More

My lovely cup, my lair’s crowning glory— And if a faun passed by, I cried out: Come, drink, and behold the loveliest cup, Zeus himself, at the merriest feast, Never had a more beautiful cup.

It is broken, the loveliest cup, The fragments lie strewn all around.

When my brothers gathered about me, We would sit around the cup. We would drink, and all who drank Would sing the tale That was engraved there next to his lips. Now we drink no more, O brothers, from the cup, Now we sing no more the tale, Nearest the lips of each of us.

It is broken, the loveliest cup, The fragments lie strewn all around.

O lament it, Echo, to the grove, Lament it to the cave-dwelling faun. It is broken, The fragments lie strewn all around.